How to Win The Cyber War!

Trans-Vernam Ciphers: A New Dimension for Modern Cryptography

Modern cryptography suffers from a largely ignored fundamental vulnerability, a largely suppressed operational limitation, and a largely overlooked un-readiness for its future largest customer.

The ignored fundamental vulnerability is expressed in the fact that modern ciphers are effective only against an adversary who shares, at most, the mathematical insight of the ciphers designers. It is an open question how vulnerable modern ciphers are to a smarter, more insightful mathematician. Furthermore, it takes just a single “Alan Turing caliber mind” to bring the entire national crypto strategy to its knees, as Alan Turing did to Nazi Germany. And no one knows if the adversary has not been fortunate to have a mathematical prodigy within its ranks.

The largely suppressed operational limitation is effected in keeping security control in the hands of the cipher designers, denying it from the owners of the protected secrets. Crypto users are locked to a limited choice of certified ciphers. Both the design and the implementation of these ciphers may include a backdoor compromising the integrity of the user. Users who are limited to the choice of certified ciphers, are experiencing a growing unease that sends many to use rogue ciphers which have not been sufficiently vetted.

The overlooked un-readiness for its future largest customer is the state of having no good answer to Internet of Things cryptography where the majority of the security devices are too simple and cheap to include an expensive sophisticated computer, and they are normally equipped with a small battery or solar panels, allowing for limited computing energy to be expended.

The combinations of these three issues is a call for a paradigm innovation, which is what is proposed herein. Trans Vernam cryptography is a novel approach where security is built not through algorithmic complexity but through algorithmic simplicity combined with large secret quantities of randomness. The security of randomness-based cryptography is hinged on combinatorics — sound and durable, and is immunized against any adversarial advantage in mathematical understanding. To the extent that the adversarial computing capacity is credibly appraised, so is the vulnerability of the cryptogram. With sufficient randomness the user can create terminal equivocation that would frustrate even an omnipotent cryptanalyst.

A Trans-Vernam cipher allows its user to determine the level of its security by determining the amount of randomness used. Modern technology experiences Moore’s law with respect to memory. Astronomical amounts of randomness may be effectively and cheaply stored on even simple and cheap devices.

The 100 years old Vernam cipher is the original unbreakable cipher where sufficient quantities of randomness are processed in most simplified bit operations. Vernam has many shortcomings, which the Trans-Vernam successors overcome.